Tip:

Before you upgrade

When you upgrade any enterprise system, including a geodatabase, plan ahead. Test the new version on a development or test server to ensure that it works with all your client applications.

When you have determined that the new system works the way you expected, schedule the upgrade; be sure the necessary staff are available to perform the upgrade and that they have the permissions necessary to complete their assigned tasks.

Be aware of the following:

You must migrate all ArcSDE application server connections used in maps or services to connect directly to the geodatabase before you can upgrade your geodatabase.

Upgrades from beta versions of the software are not supported.

You can upgrade directly from a 10.2.x, 10.3.x, 10.4.x, or 10.5.x geodatabase if your database is at a supported release.

If your geodatabase is at release 10 or earlier, you must first upgrade to a supported geodatabase release before you can upgrade to the current ArcGIS release.

Once a geodatabase has been upgraded to the current release, ArcGIS 10 and older clients cannot connect to it.

There is no formal mechanism to downgrade a geodatabase to a previous version. If after upgrading to a newer version you want to downgrade the geodatabase, you must restore the old database from a backup file.

The following is a checklist of steps to complete before you upgrade your geodatabase:

Your database must be at a supported release and your hardware must meet at least the minimum system requirements before you upgrade your geodatabase.

Check to see if your geodatabase can be upgraded. To do this, install the ArcGIS client version you want to move to onto one machine. If you install ArcGIS Desktop, you can connect to the geodatabase and open the Database Properties dialog box to see if a geodatabase upgrade is possible. If you install ArcGIS Server (enterprise edition) or the ArcGIS Engine Geodatabase Update extension, you can use the ArcPy Describe function to determine if the geodatabase can be upgraded.

If false is returned, you can upgrade your geodatabase. If true is returned, you do not need to upgrade your geodatabase. Do not proceed with the subsequent steps.

Convert any application server connections used in existing maps or services to direct connections.

Create a backup of the database.

The sde user needs to execute the MON_GET_CONNECTION function to clean out unneeded connections from the PROCESS_INFORMATION system table. Therefore, grant EXECUTE on MON_GET_CONNECTION to sde.

If your database administrator has revoked SELECT privileges on the SYSIBM.SYSDUMMY1 catalog view, he or she may need to either regrant the privilege to PUBLIC or grant it to all users who connect to the geodatabase in Db2. This privilege is necessary for SQL queries to the database.

If users do not have SELECT privileges on this catalog view, they see an error similar to the following when they try to connect:

SQL0551N "ANYA" does not have the privilege to perform operation "SELECT" on object "SYSIBM.SYSDUMMY1". SQLSTATE=42501

To grant SELECT privileges on this view to PUBLIC, issue the following command while logged in as a user with DBADM permission:

GRANTSELECTONSYSIBM.SYSDUMMY1TOPUBLIC;

Grant the sde user DBADM authority in the database. This is required to upgrade a geodatabase.

Remove any custom functionality you may have added to the geodatabase system tables outside ArcGIS, such as triggers or additional indexes.

The upgrade procedure cannot accommodate customizations you make to the system tables. If such customizations prevent the alteration of a system table's schema, the upgrade will fail.

At this point, you might want to create a second backup of the database to preserve the changes you made in the preceding steps.

Install the current release of an ArcGIS client (ArcGIS DesktopDesktop Standard or Desktop Advanced, the ArcGIS Engine Geodatabase Update extension, or ArcGIS Server (enterprise edition) on a computer that can connect to the geodatabase to perform the upgrade.

Make sure there are no connections to the geodatabase you are upgrading.

Upgrade the geodatabase

You can use the Upgrade Geodatabase tool in ArcGIS Desktop or a Python script run on the ArcGIS client computer to upgrade your geodatabase.

Use the Upgrade Geodatabase tool

You can open the Upgrade Geodatabase geoprocessing tool from

The Geodatabase Administration toolset in the Data Management toolbox

The Upgrade Geodatabase button on the General tab of the Database Properties dialog box in ArcMap or ArcCatalog

The Run Upgrade button on the General tab of the Database Properties dialog box in ArcGIS Pro

If you open the tool from Database Properties, the Input geodatabase text box is prepopulated with the geodatabase
connection information.

Esri recommends that you leave both
the Pre-requisites check and Upgrade geodatabase options checked. That way, the tool checks to see if
the prerequisites to upgrade have been met before continuing with
the geodatabase upgrade.

The prerequisite check detects other active connections to the geodatabase, determines whether the connecting user has sufficient privileges to upgrade the geodatabase, ensures that the database can support XML columns, makes sure all datasets can be opened, and ascertains that the database and libraries are at the same release. If any prerequisites are not met, the tool terminates. You must correct any problems before you run the upgrade procedure again.

The results of this check are reported on the geoprocessing tool dialog box. If the check (or upgrade) fails, results are also written to the GDBUpgrade.log file, which can be found in c:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\ESRI\<ArcGIS product>.

If all checks are passed, the tool proceeds with the upgrade. The status for the prerequisites check and the upgrade are shown on the geoprocessing tool progress dialog box. If the upgrade fails, information is written to the GDBUpgrade.log file. Additional information is written to the sde_setup.log file, which can be found in the system TEMP directory.

Run a script

To upgrade the geodatabase, copy one of these example scripts into a text editor. Alter any variable values to match the information at your site.

If you have an existing database connection file that uses a direct connection and connects as the sde user, copy the script that applies to your operating system, paste it into a text editor, alter it to use information specific to your site, save and close the file, then run it:

If you do not have a database connection file on the computer from which you are scripting the upgrade, you can copy the following script and provide your site-specific information at the command line: